Broken Toe Nail

My partner stepped on my big toe the other day while we were practicing. It did not hurt much at the time. Later I found the toe nail is broken into halves right across in the middle of the toe. The broken piece is so big that it is still hanging where it is. It still does not hurt. But I know it will as the broken piece will shift out of its place. What should I do to make it less painful?

WRap a good bandaid around it. Eventually, the nail will fall off by itself (there might be a few painful moments) but when the skin and nail naturally sluff, if will get looser and looser. The process is relatively slow so make sure you protect that toe with a good, sticky bandaid. Later, you might need to cut the bandaid and leave it glued to the nail, and just remove both bandage and nail when the time has come.

My dear husbands done it twice to my left big toe..
In both cases i had to take the broken part off, which resulted in alot of bleeding at the studio.. Now i have bandaids in my dance bag!
But if you can't do a little "surgery" on it, try some nail glue and wrap it with a good surgical tape.. I've had to keep mine bandaged for about 2 weeks till the part that, was, under the nail heals up. Opppsss i also used the antibiotic bandaids and that seems to speed up the healing a bit...
I have closed toed shoes on order now!!!!!

Ouch! I've actually had this before during a Viennese ball... although it was painful enough that I latched onto my partner with a death grip.

I'd try superglueing it if you can, at least as a temporary fix until it naturally falls off (the superglue won't hold forever, but at least for a little bit). Also, make sure to trim the top part down as short as you can, to reduce the chances of it getting caught on something else and coming off at a bad time.

I practice with a lady who has a very sensitive big toe. This is from being stepped on (not by me) a number of times. I think she lost her toenail at least one of these times. The toenail is grown back but toe is still very sensitive. I was wondering if there is any type of toe protector that could be worn to protect toe, but not be too bothersome so that one could still dance.

As I understand your description DB the split is from the base of the nail but not quite to the end? That means if youtrim it it will separate into two as you will loose the bridging bit on the end? So you are a bit stuck since as said above, you need to trim it to make sure it doesn't catch on anything (I'm grimacing here just thinking about it ).

I think latervet's suggestion is a good one - but that requires some caution. Why not go to a nail sallon and, while its still linked, get them to glue one of those whole-nails on top. The only concern with that is that you then have a sealed in gap under the nail that could get infected. Perhaps you should just glue on a couple of cross pieces to hold it in place, so that it can breathe, and also put bactericidal cream on it every day. You might even ask a doc...

I didn't believe anyone when they said the nail will come off on it's own, but it does. I know what it's like. I've been through it. It's not any fun, but I personally would wrap it up with something like gauze until heals if it's painful. Be careful what else you do to it as if I had done to mine probably would have resulted in an infection if I had messed with it any further. It depends on how messed up your toe is though. Mine was pretty bad, as I had to put an ice pack on mine right away etc.

So I saw a podiatric surgeon. He told me that my toe nail appeared to be still well attached to the base and he did not feel that he needed to do anything for me. He even said that I do not need to bandaid it, either. He told me to keep dancing. I do not know if he knows anything about dancing.